'973.7L63         Hertz,  Emanuel 
|GHUUat  Abraham  Lincoln 

cop»3  of  the  synagogue ♦ 


The  tribute 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
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ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

THE  TRIBUTE  OF 
THE   SYNAGOGUE 

EMANUEL     HERTZ 


'■■■:■ 


Delivered  over  WEAV ,  February  p,  1927,  under  the  auspices  of  the 
United  Synagogue  of  America 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

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University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign 


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Cojb,  3 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN: 
THE  TRIBUTE  OF  THE  SYNAGOGUE 

By  EMANUEL  HERTZ 


HAT  the  righteous  men  of  other  nations  are  fraternally 
received  by  onr  sages,  has  never  been  more  genuinely  exem- 
plified than  in  the  case  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  Among  the 
leaders  of  the  Jewish  people  from  the  very  beginning,  he 
found  many  of  his  staunchest  supporters.  Among  them  he  found  unselfish 
advisors — men  who  wished  him  well,  because  of  the  reverence  they  had 
for  him.  Few,  if  any,  worried  him  with  selfish  requests.  None  were 
to  be  found  among  them  who  added  to  his  burdens,  either  by  unsought- 
for  advice  or  by  violent  criticism — and  he  suffered  from  a  plethora  of 
both.  All  showed  an  abiding  faith  in  his  sincerity,  in  his  patience,  in 
his  wisdom — and  not  one  doubted  that  the  Union  was  safe  in  his  hands. 
The  Rabbis  were  among  the  first  to  respond  to  his  call  for  the  help  of 
the  pulpit — in  those  days  an  all-powerful  instrument  for  molding  public 
opinion — and  by  reason  of  such  help  the  Jewish  people  in  the  North  did 
their  full  share  in  the  struggle  for  maintaining  the  Union.  At  the 
bidding  of  the  Rabbi  the  soldiers  came  to  the  assistance  of  the  superman 
who  was  about  to  duplicate  the  miracle  performed  thousands  of  years 
ago  by  Moses  who  had  fought  a  similar  life  and  death  struggle  with  the 
Pharaoh  of  his  time.  Small  as  was  the  Jewish  population  in  those  days 
it  was  almost  unanimously  behind  the  President :  banker,  merchant, 
tradesman,  teacher,  preacher — all  were  ready,  and  when  the  call  of  the 
President   came   they   answered :   "hinayni" — we   are   ready. 

This  is  not  the  time  nor  the  place  to  call  the  roll  of  all  who  partici- 
pated in  the  many-sided  activities  of  the  war — Simon  Wolf,  a  sort  of 
lay  preacher  did  that  in  part  some  years  ago.  When  the  assassin  did 
his  cowardly  and  monstrous  deed  the  Rabbis,  like  all  the  other  spiritual 
leaders  of  the  American  people,  recognized  that  a  prince  among  men 
had  indeed  fallen  on  that  day  of  universal  tears.  And  it  is  interesting 
indeed,  to  note  the  heights  of  eloquence  attained  by  the  entire  chorus 
of  divines  throughout  the  houses  of  worship  in  the  land — in  their  lamen- 
tations for  the  dead  President — the  preachers  of  a  people  whose  portion 
had  ever  been  sorrow,  felt  even  a  keener  pain  in  the  abnormal  and 
untimely  passing  away  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  Then  it  appeared  how 
great  was  the  number  of  representative  Jews  with  whom  he  had  com- 
muned, how  many  of  them  he  had  consulted,  and  what  is  more,  how 
many  of  them  had  been  impressed  into  the  service  of  freeing  the 
oppressed,  by  the  simple,  but  eloquent  words  of  this  great  leader  of  the 


787421 


common  people.  He  was  proud  of  his  kinship  with  them  by  his  life 
inspired  by  the  Bible — their  book.  He  was  happy  that  he  was  classed 
by  them  with  their  own  lawgiver,  whose  trials  and  tribulations  he  dupli- 
cated on  this  continent — the  newest,  even  as  did  his  prototype  Moses  in 
the  oldest  land  on  the  oldest  of  continents. 

Amidst  the  universal  mourning  and  the  flood  of  eulogy  and  agon- 
izing prayer  these  notes  were  clearly  discernible.  The  saintly  Sabato 
Morais — the  friend  of  Mazzini's,  Italy's  Lincoln ;  Isaac  M.  Wise, 
teacher,  preacher,  organizer  of  Reform  Judaism,  a  Jewish  leader  of 
national  renown ;  the  erudite  Szold ;  the  learned  Leeser ;  the  scholarly 
Felsenthal ;  the  fiery  and  fearless  orator-preacher,  David  Einhorn,  and 
a  host  of  others,  all  pre-eminent  in  their  calling — and  there  were  giants 
in  those  days  in  the  Jewish  ministry — by  word  and  pen  easily  equalled 
the  best  that  was  said  by  the  preachers  of  other  denominations  in  that 
hour  which  tried  men's  souls  as  they  had  not  been  tried  by  four  years 
of  shot  and  shell.  It  was  a  time  when  in  his  agony  man,  like  Job, 
was  tempted  to  question,  if  not  quarrel  with  his  Maker — for  the  ordinary 
man  could  not  comprehend  the  need  for  this  fiendish  deed — for  this 
universally  beloved  sacrifice;  every  heart  stood  still  for  the  moment;  and 
the  Rabbi  of  his  day,  looking  back  and  recalling  the  equally  puzzling 
agony  of  his  people — for  well  nigh  two  thousand  years,  equally  inex- 
plicable— repeated  almost  the  last  words  of  the  martyred  President 
nftNn  pi  TH2  Boruch  Dayon  Hoemes — or  as  Lincoln  has  it:  "The 
judgments  of  the   Lord  are  true  and  righteous  altogether." 

The  Rabbis  of  those  days  set  a  high  standard  for  the  Lincoln  eulogy 
— a  standard  that  proved  difficult  to  approach,  if  not  to  equal.  And  yet 
there  are  quite  a  number  among  the  latter  day  Rabbis  who  easily  rank 
with  the  efforts  of  those  founders  and  protagonists  of  the  Synagogue  in 
America.  That  incomparable  orator  and  preacher,  Emil  G.  Hirsch,  and 
Stephen  S.  Wise,  whose  name  is  a  household  word  in  America,  and  three 
brilliant  sermons  by  the  late  Rabbi  J.  Leonard  Levy  and  a  series  of 
lecture-sermons  by  Rabbi  Joseph  Krauskopf,  easily  duplicate  the  effort 
of  their  sires  of  the  period  at  the  conclusion  of  the  Civil  War.  But  then 
this  younger  generation  had  the  advantage  of  the  distance,  of  the  per- 
spective which  comes  with  years — the  advantage  of  seeing  the  collected 
works  of  Lincoln  and  the  opinions  of  an  entire  world  about  the  great 
Emancipator.  Ideas  became  clarified,  slander  was  for  the  most  part 
eliminated,  passion  of  the  sections  has  almost  completely  disappeared, 
and  there  remains  only  the  great  figure  of  the  simple  American — "The 
First  American" — who  was  called  to  the  helm  of  the  Ship  of  State  when 
it  had  well  nigh  foundered  on  the  rock  of  secession — at  a  time  when 
the  best  thought  of  an  entire  section  had  declared  the  Union  dissolved — 
split  upon  the  rock  of  Slavery.  These  latter  day  Rabbis  have  dwelt  upon 
well  nigh  every  phase  of  the  character  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  have 


answered    so   many   mooted   questions   about   him   that   it   would  be   but 

simple  justice  to  collect  all  these  sermons  and  addresses  in  answer  to 
those  who  still  carp  and  cavil  about  things  which  these  Rabbis  have 
solved  and  demonstrated.  Was  Lincoln  religious? — a  question  which 
troubles  so  many — read  Leonard  Levy's  sermon  on  Lincoln's  religion. 
Was  Lincoln  "a  religion  in  our  land''?  read  Stephen  Wise's  address 
*" Lincoln,  Alan  and  American."  Was  Lincoln  the  greatest  of  leaders? 
— read  llirsch's  address  at  the  Chicago  Lincoln  Centennial  Celebration. 
Was  he  "Chosen  of  God"  read  Krauskopf's  brilliant  addresses  delivered 
in  successive  years  at  Keneseth  Israel.  Was  Lincoln  a  mystic  force, 
read  Professor  Schechter's  classical  paper  delivered  at  the  Jewish  Theo- 
logical   Seminary   in    1909. 

Whoever  else  has  not  understood  him — and  there  are  some  to  this 
day  who  speak  of  "Mister  Lincoln,  the  frontier  lawyer";  whoever  else 
has  misinterpreted  him — and  there  are  those  who  dilate  upon  the  "Real 
Lincoln";  whoever  else  has  slandered  him — and  there  are  those  of  both 
sexes  who  continue  to  blaspheme ;  whoever  else  has  attempted  to  whittle 
away  his  greatness — and  there  are  the  biographers  of  contemporary 
statesmen  who  simply  cannot  do  justice  to  their  particular  hero  unless 
they  belittle  and  carve  away  part  of  the  deeds  and  desserts  of  Lincoln ; 
his  nobility  of  soul,  his  love  of  father  and  mother  as  emphasized  by 
Rabbi  Szold,  his  tenderness  of  heart  to  the  child,  his  heart  throbs  for 
the  distracted  mother  of  the  young  soldier  about  to  be  shot  to  appease 
the  military  Moloch  called  discipline — have  been  appreciated  and  under- 
stood and  have  been  clad  in  glorious  words — by  the  Rabbis  of  the  last 
sixty  years — to  their  innumerable  hearers  in  the  Synagogues  of  America. 

And  so  these  sayings  of  the  Rabbis  might  well  be  collected  and 
supplemented  from  year  to  year  as  the  permanent  tribute  of  the  Syna- 
gogue then  and  now,  and  at  all  time  to  come  to  the  deeds,  the  aspirations, 
the  accomplishments  of  one  of  its  honored  members  —  ordained  and 
inducted  into  its  hallowed  walls  by  the  teachers  in  Israel  of  today — a> 
have  the  greatest  friends  and  leaders  of  the  race,  through  the  ages,  been 
received  by  the  Sages  and  spiritual  leaders  of  Israel  from  the  days  of 
Socrates,  of  Plato  and  of  Aristotle,  to  the  present  day,  as  is  cryStalized 
by  the  dictum  of  our  sages: 


*&" 


(Tosefta  Sanhedrin,  xii,  2  and  b.  Sanhedrin,  105a  cf.  also  Midrash  Tehilim,  ix, 

15  ed.  Buber  p.  90.) 

or  as  Maimonides  has  it : 

Kin  D^y^  p^n  en1?  en  rtiyn  mow  H^on 

(Moses   Maimonides,   Yad    Hachazakah,    Hilchot    Melakim.    viii.    11.) 

The  names  of  the  worthy  of  Jew  and  non-Jew  alike,  are  to  be  found 
on  the  resplendent  Heavenly  roster  of  immortality. 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  THE  TRIBUTE  OF  SYNAOOGU 


3  0112  031819474 


